I've received numerous tips about the strange and tragic story of the murder of Ohio mom Jennifer Nelson. The 29-year-old Nelson's murder in her Dayton-area home was discovered after a couple found Nelson's 4-year-old son William wandering a rest stop on I-70.
William knew his parents' names and his home address, and that was how his mother's body was discovered.
An arrest has been made in this convoluted case: 22-year-old Charlie Myers of Columbus. Myers has apparently confessed to his part in the crime. He faces a charge of aggravated murder.
There have been many twists and turns in this case.
Nearly two weeks before Jennifer Nelson was shot, she and husband Eddie went to a concert in Columbus. While they were there, the couple's Honda was stolen from a parking garage on the OSU campus. A good deal of info was apparently inside the vehicle that could have pointed a perceptive thief back to the Nelsons' home in Dayton.
And that's where the Honda was found after Jennifer Nelson was murdered -- close to the Nelson residence on Redder Avenue, just outside Dayton. At the time, one of the Nelsons' other cars was missing, a black Oldsmobile Alero.
The Alero was found near Charlie Myers's residence in Columbus.
Myers was arrested in the past for arson and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. If the photo aired by MSNBC was accurate, then Myers (or an exact lookalike) has several profiles on MySpace, with screen names like "pimp_deaf_boy" and "lil_pimp_myers." One of the profiles states that he attended the Ohio School for the Deaf and studied computers. On another page, Myers wrote that he was "hard of hearing" and the "real pimp Charlie Myers." Photos attached to all the pages show the same young man seen in a photo broadcast on cable news, frequently wearing a ballcap cocked at an angle, affecting a hard look, a middle finger sometimes raised to the camera.
Based on the portion of the police press conference about Myers's arrest broadcast on MSNBC, it seems like police believe they are not done with their investigation, in spite of Myers's supposed confession. That said, people always automatically suspect the husband in cases like this, and police have stated more than once that Eddie Nelson is not a suspect. Nelson currently has custody of his son and has taken time off from his multiple jobs to care for William.
Readers are requesting links to Charlie's MySpace pages. Here ya go -- I hesitated because MSNBC was, at the time, the only source for his photo and if there was a chance it wasn't the same guy, I didn't want to link it. That's changed. So:
There is a fourth site that has only photos of a young woman but is listed as owned by a 22-year-old male named Charlie Myers. I've left that off this list. Also, those intrepid net detectives at Websleuths.com turned up Charlie Myers's VampireFreaks.com account:
Three people are dead and North Carolina authorities have issued an Amber Alert for two missing children. A 911 call came into Buncombe County Sheriff's Deputies today from a home on Old Highway 19-23 near Asheville, NC. When the authorities arrived they found two dead bodies inside the home and a third dead body in another residence nearby. The names of two victims are being withheld, the third victim is the missing childrens' mother, Angela Heatwole. The missing kids are Hayes Heatwole, age 6, and Haley Heatwole, age 10. Hayes is a blue-eyed boy with long blond hair and glasses. Haley has brown hair and hazel eyes. Police think the children are with Richard Heatwole. They may be in a white Toyota Tundra with North Carolina plates. Richard Heatwole may be armed and dangerous. At one time Richard Heatwole was the owner of Big D's Golf Range & Pro Shop on Old 19-23 there in Candler, but more recently he'd been advertising Big D's Handyman Service.
Heatwole has a record in Florida for possession of a controlled substance and marijuana possession. For a man nicknamed "Big D" he isn't very large -- his page with Florida corrections lists Heatwole as 5'7" and 155 lbs.
I have a sneaking suspicion this story may be a little too close in some respects to the terrible saga behind Bruce Pardo's Santa-suited Christmas Eve massacre, when all is said and done. [FoxCarolina.com]
UPDATE, 1/02/09
Richard Heatwole has committed suicide and Haley and Hayes Heatwole are safe.Heatwole killed himself after a police standoff at the residence of a relative in Taylorsville, NC.
Will Lee Anthony face charges that he obstructed justice? He's hired a lawyer. Lee's attorney Thomas Luka appeared on Greta van Susteren's show on Fox last night and addressed the issue with guest host Megyn Kelly. Quote:
KELLY: What do you make of these charges, these potential charges? What are you hearing is the possibly basis behind them?
LUKA: Well, first of all, there has been no announcement, formal or otherwise, that there are charges pending against Lee Anthony. This is all speculation and rumor at this time.
What I can tell you is that there has been speculation that he may be charged as an accessory after the fact for some sort of obstruction of justice charge.
The law in Florida, the statue in Florida dealing with obstruction of justice is very broad and gives prosecutors a wide latitude to use that power to charge individuals in order to motivate them to testify against other defendants.
Later, in the same interview, Kelly asked Luka an interesting question: "Does [Lee] still believe in the innocence of his sister?"
And Luka's answer was equally interesting:
At this point, he has not made a determination as
to that fact right now. That fact has yet to even be determined--that
fact can only be determined by a court of law...
In short, he didn't really answer the question at all, not in any direct way. So you have to wonder if the Anthony family's internal cohesion where defending Casey is concerned has finally begun to crumble.
It looks to me like the Orange County, Florida authorities are putting the screws to the Anthonys in general to get them to cooperate with the investigation. If solid speculation about charging George and Cindy Anthony with obstruction starts popping up in news stories soon, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. [FoxNews.com]
A KCAL news segment about the Christmas Eve massacre committed by Bruce Pardo.
Former aerospace engineer Bruce Jeffrey Pardo had no criminal record. He had no known history of violence. On December 24, he committed an act of mass murder that stunned the nation. Bruce gave history the nightmare come true of the monster in the Santa suit, standing at the door to a home filled with happiness and Christmas cheer.
Just before the calendar turned over to Christmas Day, 2008, an 8-year-old girl opened the door to the Santa-suited Pardo. Then all hell broke loose. At least 9 were dead before he was done, including his ex-in-laws, the Ortegas, and his former wife, Sylvia Pardo.
According to the Associated Press, Pardo's attack on the Ortega Family home on Knollcrest Drive in Covina, CA sowed the seeds of his suicide later that night at the home of his brother Brad in Sylmar, CA. The AP reported Friday that Pardo had been burned in the explosion that precipitated the fire that gutted the Ortega residence. The burns may have been so severe that Pardo decided the next best thing to do was kill himself. He'd planned for something else, though -- several thousand dollars were attached to his body with plastic wrap and a girdle, and he had some plane tickets to Canada.
Reading about the Covina tragedy and Pardo's assault on the home of his ex-wife's family, it is easy to believe he was an ice-cold, cruel, calculating monster.
He may have been just that. But the portrait that is emerging of Pardo through some past acquaintances is neither as benign as the sketch of the devout Catholic who volunteered to usher for church services nor as vicious as the view anyone might hold learning of the massacre committed on Christmas Eve.
Bruce Pardo was weird. Not spooky weird, either. But definitely strange. The blogger who writes BrokenCountry.com claims he knew Pardo in passing, and in a post made on Christmas Day, he told an interesting story to illustrate Pardo's alleged weirdness:
I remember Mr. Pardo as being kind of nutty, and I am not just saying this because of the current tragedy. On several occasions I had to leave a door note explaining that I could not get in the back yard to service his swimming pool. The reason was because there was enough dog poop on the ground to make a clay model of a Buick Roadmaster.
So Mr. Pardo called and was rather irate and asked if I could come by on a Saturday as he would have it cleaned up. I did just that, but upon arrival the dog feculance was still there. I knocked on the door and Bruce Pardo came out and said " Oh what's the big deal? Mr. Pardo proceeded to kick the mushy piles of dooty out of the way with his bare foot.
Mr. Pardo had crap all over his foot. I went out to the pool thinking "how is he going to get all the dooty off of his foot? I will tell you how. As I am setting up to clean his filthy pool, Mr. Pardo walks over to the steps in the shallow end, puts his foot in the water, shakes it vigorously and proceeds to rub the poop off with his bare hands. I mean Mr. Pardo did this as if he did it all the time. Without hesitation.
I waited for him to go back in the house and I packed my stuff and left never to return again.
[I think it's worth noting that this post has already received a comment indicating that this story from BrokenCountry.com may be a fake. A check of records for a 45-year-old Bruce J. Pardo showed past residency at addresses in Sylmar, Woodland Hills and Prescott, AZ. No actual street addresses for Pardo in Covina, and BrokenCountry does claim Pardo was renting a home in Covina at the time of the story related above. ~ Ed.]
Earlier today, I contacted a woman who dated Bruce Pardo several years ago for some insight into the man who will now be forever known as the Santa Slayer, or some even more tabloid variation on that moniker. I agreed to only use her first name, Tina, for the interview.
I first asked Tina about the story published on BrokenCountry.com. I wondered if that was characteristic of the Bruce she knew. Tina responded, "TOTALLY. He once asked me where babies came from."
Bruce Pardo, according to Tina, "was VERY smart but was lacking in common sense." She dated Pardo in the late 1990s for about 6 months, and broke up with him, in part, because "Bad luck followed this guy."
She described Pardo as a "Big Kid," and told me about the trip she took with him to Lake Havasu, Arizona that cinched her decision to break up with him. Calling the whole trip "a cluster f**k of bad luck situations," she illustrated Pardo's bizarre lack of maturity: one of the many disasters plaguing Tina's trip with Bruce was a spill she took into the river. Tina said she almost drowned. Bruce Pardo's reaction? He "laughed...told me it was no big deal." Later in our conversation, she elaborated: "I almost drowned...I was screaming at him and hitting him and he was laughing."
Tina met Bruce Pardo while she was working a part-time job in a liquor store. He'd been coming to the store with another woman, and she "thought he was cute." Pardo drove a red Miata convertible. Tina told me she thought he kept the top down all the time because he was so tall -- perhaps 6'3" or 6'4".
Pardo finally asked her out -- to a Monster Truck show.
She got to know a guy who "liked to have fun" and who was really a "big goof."
When Tina broke up with Bruce after the ill-fated trip to Lake Havasu, she said he took it well and they remained friends. Still, she said, "The Bruce I knew was always being taken advantage of by women."
And at times, he apparently didn't treat them well himself. According to Tina, Bruce Pardo once left a bride standing at the altar. He also told her of breaking off an engagement to another woman "right before" the wedding.
What wasn't clear from our conversation was just how real Bruce Pardo's sense of being screwed over truly was. I asked Tina, "Do you think this was true, that he tended to get with people who wanted to sponge, or is it possible he was a little paranoid?"
She said, "Good question. I think he tended to get with people who weren't as intelligent as he was -- not trying to be derogatory -- he was VERY smart....just didn't have a whole lot of common sense."
Bruce Pardo was, to Tina, a weird man-child who had no feel for how to act like a responsible adult, but she finds his crimes on Christmas Eve unthinkable: "For this entire day," she said, "my mind keeps picturing Bruce as I knew him and trying to place him in that situation and I just can't. I just can't see how he could have gone over the edge so far that he could shoot a little girl in the face like it was nothing....and continue to shoot randomly at people." Tina said she wants to believe that Pardo committed suicide out of remorse, rather than out of it being his last, best choice. "I think the true realization of what he did slammed into him forcing him into reality and he couldn't take what he had done."
"Something snapped inside his brain," Tina said, "so he wasn't Bruce anymore."
AP video about the Covina attack committed by a madman in a Santa suit.
Covina, CA-- Six bodies have been found in the burned-out home where a man in a Santa costume opened fire during a party on Christmas Eve. The suspect in the massacre, 45-year-old Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, has committed suicide. He was found early Christmas day at his brother's residence in Sylmar, California.
The death toll from this mass murder could go up to 8, according to the Los Angeles Times.
According to the LA paper and other press outlets, Pardo was angry over a bitter divorce and the focus of his rage was a party being given at his in-laws' residence on Knollcrest Drive in Covina.
It looks as though Bruce Pardo's act was planned and executed with calculated cruelty.
He showed up wearing a Santa suit and bearing what appeared to be a present. An 8-year-old girl inside the residence, perhaps having a natural reaction to the sight of Santa bearing a gift, opened the front door. That was when Pardo opened fire, shooting the girl in the face. She was, fortunately, said to be among the survivors.
Pardo then entered the home, firing his handgun all the way. And inside the "present," police believe Pardo carried what the Times termed a "a home-made pressurized device" that the killer used "to spray some kind of flammable substance."
So the house eventually erupted in flames. In spite of emergency services flooding the cul-de-sac where the tragedy occurred, Pardo got away. He showed up again around 3:30 Christmas morning, some 25 miles away in Sylmar. Bruce Jeffrey Pardo was dead from a bullet to the head.
The book on Pardo so far has been that he was an outwardly nice guy, a devout Catholic who'd recently divorced. He may have also lost his job.
One reason the death toll from Pardo's attack is still unclear -- the intensity of the fire that destroyed the 2-story suburban home. Many of the remains were charred and may be difficult to identify. [SGVTribune.com, LAT]
It's no surprise that Clint Horvatt has been arrested for the murder of his fiancee, Summer Smith. What is, perhaps, a little surprising, is that another man has been arrested as well. One 53-year-old William Dewey Foster is also in the Putnam County (FL) jail, and he's been charged with First Degree Murder. Investigation by Putnam County authorities showed that Horvatt allegedly contacted Foster last November. Clint allegedly needed someone to kill Summer. He and Foster talked about the murder a number of times before Summer was murdered. The whole thing, police say, was staged. Clint Horvatt wanted it to look like a robbery.
I was recently contacted by one of Clint Horvatt's exes. She is still so afraid of him still that she refuses to allow her name to be published. Out of deference to her fear of him, I chose not to write about what she told me until Clint was behind bars -- as I was sure he would be.
Clint, she told me, "was always physical," and she thought he might "strangle or beat someone to death, rather than some elaborate murder"
Clint Horvatt, according to my source, "hides his true nature from everyone, that is for sure."
There was much more -- including allegations that he committed a wide variety of violent crimes as well as theft in the past. It seems more clear than ever that Clint may be a semi-well-concealed psychopath whose manipulations and machinations have finally failed him.
According to First Coast News, police are still searching for the weapon used to kill Summer Smith. [FirstCoastNews.com]
An AP video explaining the "touch DNA" that the Boulder DA used to exonerate the Ramsey family.
JonBenet Ramsey would be graduating from high school this year, if she'd lived past Christmas, 1996. But as anyone and everyone knows by now, the 6-year-old beauty queen was mysteriously murdered on the night of December 25/26, 1996.
Nancy Grace Show producer Rupa Mikkilineni has authored a recap of the case for CNN.com. The article recounts the major developments in the case. A quote:
For many, the images of this tragic story are indelible: A doll-like
child smiling flirtatiously at the camera in flamboyant costumes, heavy
makeup and grown-up hairstyles parading on a beauty pageant stage. A
tiny, lifeless body, dressed in long johns, found on the basement floor
by her father.
Mikkilineni goes on to note:
Just this past July, John and Patsy Ramsey were exonerated by police of
having any role in their daughter's death. Patsy Ramsey died of cancer
in June 2006.
The article doesn't really touch on just how deeply this murder mystery has become embedded in our national dialogue. The JonBenet murder mystery ranks up there with the OJ Trial, may even outrank it, for the way it's provided grist for the merciless mill of popular culture. A few examples:
Don't get me wrong -- I think Joyce Carol Oates, the novelist who authored this cryptobiography of the Ramsey clan, is brilliant, and I love her writing. That said, I couldn't finish this book. It was too broad in many places, too cartoonish, and conversely, some of the characterizations were way too flat -- and (spoiler alert) Oates's denouement was sabotaged after the book's release by the Boulder DA's announcement that DNA results pointed away from the Ramseys killing their daughter. As a writer I found Oates's exercise fascinating, but I also wondered if the writing of the book was the ultimate sign of cultural saturation where the Ramsey murder was concerned. Is one of America's finest novelists putting their spin on the story just another sign that the truth will never truly be known? Most people still insist that we just don't know what happened -- the hate of Patsy is often strong with this group -- and having a solution to the crime novelized seems to somehow put a metaphysical cap on things. One I don't think the story needs to have yet.
Years ago Ted Bundy's Volkswagen was a band that frequently played college nightspots in Middle Tennessee. I got that. It was sick and inappropriate, and frankly a little funny. That said, I'd never pay to see the guys play. I pretty much feel the same way about The Jonbenet, a group out of Houston that is sometimes called post-hardcore and which puts out albums with titles like Devil Music and The Kidnap Soundtrack. That is, I get the joke, and kinda think it's funny, but not very, and I'm pretty sure it wears thin after a while. In the end, a kindergartener dead in a basement is just not the sort of thing you want to mess with, karmically-speaking.
I like Family Guy, which is probably something I should keep to myself, but the JonBenet jokes and references they occasionally throw into the dialogue are a bit too much, even for me. The worst example: in one episode, Stewie (the baby of the family) is cross-dressing, but he objects to entering the Little Miss Texas pageant, referring to it as "a one way ticket to a semen-covered death in the basement." That's not edgy. It's just nauseating.
Long before folks were posting horrid videos with treacly soundtracks about Caylee Anthony on YouTube, they were working the same sort of nerve with JonBenet Ramsey. The example video below was posted 2 years ago, when YouTube was still pretty new and a relatively novel thing. But I shouldn't single out YouTubers here -- there has been a kind of cult of JonBenet on the Web for 12 years now, hence the current tally of 331,000 hits on Google. Plenty of folks just want to discuss a confounding and tragic unsolved crime, one filled with likely suspects -- the social-climbing parents who paraded the child in front of pageant audiences, the older brother in the shadows, various family friends, a sickly old guy who played Santa, truly scary, predatory malcontents who may have been creepy-crawling homes in Boulder at the time -- but some seem much more drawn to the pathos and tragedy of it all. These are the folks who act as if JonBenet was their own kid, probably while their real kid goes blissfully ignored by the parent in question. The most extreme example ever of this type of sob sister (okay, that's a stretch, but still, it's true in some respects) was probably the JonBenet Ramsey case's most onerous contribution to pop culture -- fantasist and all-around spooky dude, John Mark Karr. He could easily be number 5 on this little list -- but the less said about him, the better.
Chaos came to the LBJ Freeway in Dallas last night as a balding, white man in his 40s apparently opened fire on several other motorists at random. Before he was done, two were dead and 1 person was injured. The bizarre spree began before 6 p.m. with its first fatality in Garland, TX. Jorge Lopez, age 20, was at a red light when someone driving a Ford pickup fired several shots into his Nissan, killing him.
Shots were reported again a few minutes later on the LBJ, but no one was injured. Then 42-year-old trucker William Scott Miller, of Frankfort, KY was killed while driving his 18 wheeler. Police say that Miller, who was going to fly home to spend Christmas with his family, behaved "heroically." According to Dallas PD Lt. Craig Miller, the trucker was "mortally wounded," but still "able to control his rig."
Another shooting occurred a short time later when another truck was hit. The driver radioed in to his dispatcher that he was "getting shot at." That driver was struck by flying glass but not hurt and his dispatcher called 911.
Police are currently receiving numerous tips about the shooter, who may have been driving an F-150 extended cab pickup with a loud muffler.
Dallas police don't think these shootings were the result of road rage, per se. Dallas police Sgt. Gil Cerda's quote, published by several press outlets, seems to characterize their take on the spree, so far, "For whatever reason, this person is upset with something or someone and he's taking it out on
innocent victims going down the road, and that's very scary."
Scary indeed, because shooters like this, if not caught quickly, may get their rage on again. [KHOU.com, UPI]
A riddle which began sometime last June is one big step closer to being solved today. Orange County, Florida authorities say the bones found last week near the Anthony home in Orlando are indeed those of Caylee Anthony. The Orange County Medical Examiner, speaking at a news conference held on Friday, said the manner of death for the child was homicide. So -- now we know where Caylee was all these months. She wasn't with someone named Zenaida. And that almost solves the mystery. But justice still seems like it's a long way off. [ClickOrlando.com]
Someone was hunting deer not far from the Atlantic City Expressway, not far from Hamilton Twp, NJ on December 8 when they made a bizarre and disturbing discovery: a 6'0" white male between 30 and 40 years of age, dead and wrapped in a rug. An unknown, a John Doe with one distinctive feature -- very small, round ears.
Atlantic City police don't know who the man was. They don't know why he was, in the words of one report, "executed." They do not yet know who killed him.
Reports indicate he'd been dead for up to a week when he was discovered. Police haven't released the cause of death in this case, but they have stated that they found no sign of the victim struggling with his attacker. They could find no obvious blood stains on the rug that shrouded the mystery man's corpse.
Identifying the man has been difficult, in part, because he had no significant dental work. He still had all his wisdom teeth, and those were impacted. Police seem to be working on the presumption that he could have been killed at any number of locations on the east coast. Anywhere from Philadelphia to Washington DC. Speaking to local media in a press conference held on Thursday, Atlantic County prosecutor Ted Housel indicated that the dead man may have been dumped specifically because it was hunting season. A truck would have been needed to carry the the 200 to 250 lb body. Referring to the dumping of the remains in the woods, Housel said, "This wasn't done with a Volkswagen Beetle."
Check out an artist's sketch of how the small-eared man may have looked in life here.
If you think you have information relevant to this case, call the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office -- (609) 909-7800. [FoxNews.com and Philly.com]
Orange County, Florida authorities held a press conference today regarding their continuing investigation of the suburban scene where bones were found last week not far from the home missing toddler Caylee Anthony shared with her mother Casey and grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony. Investigators have found new bones near the scene. They termed the bones a "significant" find; meaning, perhaps, they are close to assembling a nearly-complete skeleton?
An interesting fact that seems to have inadvertently been revealed during the presser was this -- some sort of call was made to authorities about the same general area on August 11, 12 and 13. These calls came just two months after Caylee vanished and they were made by the same utility worker, a meter reader who allegedly found the bones on Dec. 11 while searching for a secluded spot to take a whizz. It may be that he actually returned to the area last week out of curiosity about something he saw last summer.
Based on inquiries made during the press conference, it appears as though the unnamed meter reader may be subject to some suspicion -- at least from the press (so take it with a grain of salt). Police emphasize only that they have definitely found the bones of a small child and that they are attempting to clarify the meter reader's story. Authorities say they have found other evidence on the scene as well, and that it is substantial.
Further information is said to be available at the Orange County Sheriff's website [osco.com] but that site has been inundated with traffic and is, at the moment, unavailable.
The other day I posted "Clint Horvatt: Do You Believe His Story?" The blog entry was about a man who witnessed the death of his fiancee, Summer Smith. Summer was allegedly killed by a mysterious black man who robbed the couple on an empty highway near Gainesville, Florida last Friday, December 12. In a video embedded in the entry Clint Horvatt spoke to a reporter from First Coast News about the tragedy. For the most part, he was surprisingly calm and collected. He seemed to grow emotional late in the interview, but he never quite made it to real tears.
The majority of comments on that post have expressed a great deal of skepticism about Clint Horvatt's story. Now it looks like police may be a little skeptical as well. At least that's one way to interpret what investigators asked Clint to do the day before Summer Smith was laid to rest.
On Tuesday this week, Clint Horvatt returned with authorities to the scene of the crime. At their request, he tried to retrace what happened after Summer allegedly told him to pull over to help the driver of the apparently broken down maroon or red Ford F150. The hoodie-wearing black man with cornrows who allegedly shot Summer with his right hand after taking her wallet with his left.
Clint said re-enacting what happened last week was rough, but he told the media that it was necessary to assist investigators in finding Summer's killer.
I think police were either seeking exactly what they said -- clarification of the timeline of events -- or they were seeing if Clint might just trip himself up in his re-telling of the story. Cops would do that anyway -- hunt for holes in a story. In a story like Clint's which seems to lack plausibility as it is, they are probably more eager than usual to figure out where the truth lies.
As I noted, many of the comments here have been very skeptical Clint Horvatt's tragic tale -- mostly due to his unruffled demeanor in the video interview. Readers of other articles have voiced similar opinions. From comments left on the article linked at the bottom of this post:
"ShawnMario wrote:
I can't believe that the investigators are really falling for this story. It's always the black guy. First of all, I am a black woman. From experience most white people are skeptical of stopping to help a black woman, let alone a black man. And with corn rows, he can't be serious. Why hasn't this guy been ruled out as suspect?"
"controversy wrote: Investigators took Horvatt back to the scene for about an hour Tuesday in an effort to uncover more clues [...] I think they're not really believing his story! It'll all come undone by next week."
"PJnGA wrote: I
find his story a bit unbelievable too. Doesn't make sense that an armed
robber would shoot just the woman and not try to shoot him too. The man
had to have been a bigger threat than she. I'm sure with this
investigation they may find his story doesn't add up."
To be sure, there were a few comments taking the opposing view, refusing to indict Clint Horvatt before the police place him under suspicion:
"Ernie1 wrote: My
gosh, what a tough crowd! Just about everyone has thrown the guy under
the bus already. I can definitely hear the Oprah/Nancy Grace "All men
are evil and plotting to kill their wives/girlfriends" mantra being
recited here [...] I think I'll reserve judgement on this one till the
investigation is complete.. I still remember how Oprah and Nancy G.
tried and convicted the Duke Lacrosse team on their shows, only to eat
humble pie later when the truth was revealed...."
"bugztyler wrote: [...] Clint did not do this and it will all be proven soon. I have known
Clint since he was 5yrs old and if he's guilty of anything its being a
kind hearted person who has to much trust in people who don't deserve
it. God bless you Clint!"
I think anyone familiar with a certain type of domestic homicide is simply going to find this story hard to swallow. I don't blame Oprah or Nancy Grace for that -- I blame Susan Smith, who blamed the murderous "mysterious black man" before it was revealed that she'd rolled the car holding her boys into the lake. I blame Justin Barber. Barber's explanation of his wife's death on a Florida beach in the summer of 2002 was about as believable as Clint Horvatt's, and Barber went the extra mile by shooting himself.
Clint Horvatt doesn't have super-suspicious, allegedly man-hating talking heads to contend with -- he has to deal with raw, recent true crime history. So far, it's working against him.
Then again -- he really could be telling the truth, strange as it may sound. If he isn't, I suspect we'll know pretty soon. [FirstCoastNews.com]
In a press conference held earlier today, Cape Cod D.A. Michael O'Keefe told reporters a bit more about a horrific discovery made yesterday evening. A burning body was found on the Cape in a hole where several new bungalows have recently been built. The heart of the grisly crime scene was the bottom of a 10-foot hole that authorities say already existed on the property where the crime occurred. The burned remains are those of a black teenager, and investigators believe he and his assailant may have known each other. The scene was termed "very disturbing" to the first responders who had to deal with it. The name of the victim has not been released.
AP video short about the Dec. 14 arrest of Joshua Turnidge.
Police in Oregon have apprehended 57-year-old Bruce Turnidge. He is the father of former Navy Serviceman Joshua Turnidge, who is currently facing multiple counts connected to the deadly Friday, December 12 bombing of a bank in Woodburn, OR. The elder Turnidge was arrested not far from Jefferson, OR and charged with conspiracy to manufacture an explosive device. He has also been charged with conspiracy to possess an explosive device.
Court documents have also explained why the explosive device that took the life of State Trooper William Hakim and police Capt. Tom Tennant was inside the bank when it went off.
Simply put, the cops thought they were dealing with a hoax. They'd examined the green metal box as it sat outside the bank and William Hakim apparently felt confident that it was a fake. Tom Tennant was holding the box and Hakim was attempting to open it when it exploded.
As for primary suspect Joshua Turnidge, he was apparently tracked in part through tell-tale purchases he made at a Wal-Mart in Bend, Oregon. Turnidge was directly fingered, however, because a Wal-Mart security video caught him leaving the store and taking off in a blue 80s model pickup registered to his father, Bruce.
Joshua Turnidge made his first court appearance today. He is due back in court again the day after Christmas. As is too often the case, his neighbors seem utterly shocked by the whole thing.
Prosecutors have yet to reveal a motive in the case, but several media reports indicate banks were being targeted. So there's that. In these straitened times, it's surprising this kind of thing has only happened once, so far. [KPTV.com]
The investigation into the hideous 1981 murder of Adam Walsh is officially over. In a Florida press conference held today police said that investigators believe Adam was killed by serial slayer Ottis Toole. They believe the now-deceased Toole, a hideous sexual predator, abducted Adam from a department store 27 years ago, killed, and then beheaded the little boy. Speaking during the emotionally-charged presser, Adam's father John Walsh (of AMW fame) stated that "The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."[FoxNews.com, see also: AMW, statements by the John & Reve Walsh and Hollywood, Fla Police Chief Chadwick Wagner.]
Riverfront Times"The Unsolved Murder of Ernie Brasier: A Clayton attorney's death nearly two years ago continues to mystify police and colleagues" St. Louis Attorney Ernie Brasier was, according to his own mother-in-law, "cut out for the priesthood." Why would anyone want to kill him? Because that's what happened to Brasier on December 19, 2006. Two years on, his murder is still unsolved. The suspects? The attorney's former colleagues. By Kathleen McLaughlin Miami New Times"The People Under the Bridge" After tough new sex-offender laws closely proscribed where convicted felons could live, the State of Florida came up with a novel idea: parking them under a bridge. The result was a bizarre community of criminals, hard-core and otherwise, setting up camp in the middle of town. This story won first place in the prestigious Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) contest. By Isaiah Thompson Houston Press"Toxic Town" In the town of Somerville, Texas, years of pollution from a massive wood-treatment plant have led to contamination levels higher than those found at Love Canal--and rates of cancer and birth defects that officials say constitute a public-health emergency. By Todd Spivak Phoenix New Times"Target Practice" Only two journalists were arrested in the United States in 2007 for exercising their First Amendment rights. They happened to be the executive editor and chief executive officer of Village Voice Media. After Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio put Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin in jail for publishing a story revealing massive abuses of the grand jury process, the paper responded with a series of articles that demonstrated--yet again--how Arpaio and his cohort, county attorney Andrew Thomas, had routinely violated the constitution in the name of law and order. By New Times editorial staff Village Voice"Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11" Someone needed to give the tough-talking presidential candidate a reality check about what happened on that fateful day. We were happy to oblige. By Wayne Barrett Houston Press"Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose" Thinking about investing in rare coins to protect yourself against an unstable economy? Before you purchase so much as a penny, read this investigative effort, which revealed the wide variety of scams used by the industry to reel in customers. The story was named a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. By Todd Spivak Seattle Weekly"What If They Weren't Gay?" Newly declassified documents put the lie to the government's claim of a Cold War homosexual conspiracy. By Rick Anderson Phoenix New Times"Snake on a Plane" You won't believe what happened when the cops told the airline it had a murderer on board. By Paul Rubin Dallas Observer"House of Death" A dozen men were tortured, killed and buried in a small house in Juarez. Three years later, the U.S. government was still trying to cover it up. By Jesse Hyde Westword"Made For Each Other" Just when the sad saga of JonBenet Ramsey had faded from memory, Colorado authorities thrust the case back into the limelight by arresting a publicity seeker named John Mark Karr for her murder. It was left to Alan Prendergast to write the definitive story of how a university professor with an agenda--and a history of fingering the wrong suspects--led the Boulder DA to make such a colossal blunder. By Alan Prendergast
Will Lee Anthony face charges that he obstructed justice? He's hired a lawyer. Lee's attorney Thomas Luka appeared on Greta van Susteren's show on Fox last night and addressed the issue with guest host Megyn Kelly. Quote:
Chaos came to the LBJ Freeway in Dallas last night as a balding, white man in his 40s apparently opened fire on several other motorists at random. Before he was done, two were dead and 1 person was injured. The bizarre spree began before 6 p.m. with its first fatality in Garland, TX. Jorge Lopez, age 20, was at a red light when someone driving a Ford pickup fired several shots into his Nissan, killing him. 
